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It may be a shocking reflection on the paucity of imagination in fantasy generally, but a dwarf with a bow near a tree is itself kind of startling. Where's the crossbow? And the mines?

All of which serves only to obscure the real question - how Welsh will the elves be? My people may not get many action hero roles, but we've got the elves pretty much sewn up. I asked Chris Avellone by email what he could tell us about the world of Project Eternity.

A lot of the strength of an RPG world lies in its foundation: its systems, lore, and when appropriate, its magic systems. While there are elements tied to Project: Eternity that at first glance seem to be classic fantasy, that’s intentional – we do want to recreate some elements of a High Fantasy experience. At the same time, however, while you may recognize certain archetypes, they’re also used as a means to draw people in, make assumptions, and then we turn those assumptions on their head to deliver a new experience.

The concept of souls, for example, is not treated lightly in this world. They persist from person to person, some fracturing, some maintaining their integrity over time, and they are a source of power in the world that players can draw upon – and their enemies can as well. We want to examine how such a fundamental world mechanic can change the shape of a people, a culture, a nation, and a world… as well as the individual. What would such a world be like with this kind of underlying mechanic? That’s one of the many questions that interest us, and they’re the ones we want to explore.

Josh Sawyer has provided more detail on the world, which will aparently be set in a new universe positioned roughly at the apex of medieval civilization, with some early black-powder weapons, gothic architecture and plate armored knights remaining the tanks of the battlefield. Plus elves, dwarves and the usual demihuman suspects - but, we are promised, with a twist.

Slain by elf

Kickstarter, of course, is itself product selling with a twist. Persuading customers to pay in advance for a product scheduled to arrive in spring 2014 is an impressive feat. What sort of audience does Avellone see for games in the style of the state of the art a decade ago? Are the people funding Kickstarter campaigns like this and Fargo's Wasteland 2 old hands at the adventure game, or is a new audience being attracted?

That’s been one of our topics of discussion over beers at a local developer watering hole – the conversation began with “how many people do you think knew about Wasteland before Brian Fargo’s Kickstarter?”

The implication is there wasn’t initially a strong push for a sequel until the idea of Kickstarter, and it was the idea of the old school RPG itself, the fight against the publisher model, and the Kickstarter process that ended up being the “hook” that people were looking for.

I’ll be honest and say that a chunk of our fanbase may not have played the Infinity Engine games, but they may be responding to many of the same elements that resonated with the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter and are willing to support those.

For example, they may be Obsidian fans willing to support the company, they may be people that want to see an RPG of our creation regardless of format, or they may be fans of developers inside the studio (like my unabashed fanboyism for Tim Cain – and his cooking). We are thankful for all of these things.

I’d like to believe that the majority of our supporters did play the old school Infinity Engine games and know what makes them special to us. I don’t have any metrics for this, however. I can only trust MY SOUL (explicit circular reference to answer to first question).

Wherever the audience has come from, it is certainly eager to put in its money. So, about those stretch goals...

We have discussions on stretch goals almost on a daily basis, and often the ideas for those stretch goals come from the public themselves. Among requests we’ve seen are mod tools and mod tool support, and we’d love to be able to bring that about. No promises yet, but anything that allows the fans and the community to add content that we can then play is a double blessing, and we loved seeing people’s creations with the GECK (Garden of Eden Creation Kit - a set of modding tools) in Fallout: New Vegas as well as creating some of our own (Josh Sawyer created a mod for the game which rebalanced it to his own tastes, and repeatedly updated it).

Edair (Body 'air not shown)

Of course, one significant difference between then and now - then being the golden age of BioWare's Infinity Game engine, running from Baldur's Gate in 1998 to Icewind Dale 2 in 2002 - is that I am carrying in my pocket a device which could not only run a game that represented a cutting-edge technological proposition at the time, but also could probably be used to build it.

As a designer, I asked Avellone, how does it feel to come back to working on something recognizably like those Infinity Engine-driven games again, compared with something like Fallout: New Vegas - which used the now more traditional first-and-third person viewpoint to explore a detailed three-dimensional world? How have the tools on the back end changed, and what do you need to build to make the game?

I enjoyed working on Fallout: New Vegas and our more recent titles, and I love working on Infinity Engine-style games as well (they’re among my first titles I got the chance to be a part of in this industry, and I enjoyed playing them also). Not much is different in terms of technology needed (if anything, the constraints are less), and with engines like Unity, constructing that kind of Infinity Engine experience is pretty painless, as I’ve discovered with Wasteland 2 so far. Another nice thing I’ve discovered is that the camera view and party options allow for a different kind of combat and encounter layout experience, and it hearkens back to my old table-top experiences as well, so it’s a double-blast of nostalgia.

The choice of Unity, the open-source gaming engine, is an interesting note - Obsidian's own Onyx engine is also being used for some of the more tradtional RPG elements, where it is obviously strong - Obsidian are known for their in-game conversations and characterization. Unity also exports flexibly to a multitude of formats - this starting decision makes ports to Mac and Linux possible. Unity also exports easily to mobile platforms - but Avellone restated Project Eternity's commitment to the PC platform - no mobile versions will be forthcoming, just as no console version will be forthcoming. For RPG enthusiasts bemoaning the compromises they see being made by studios like BioWare and CD Projekt – the leading lights of the RPG genre - in the name of console-friendliness, this should come as a relief.